Notes From The Inauguration

Ann McElaney-Johnson was inaugurated as the twelfth president of Mount St. Mary’s College last Friday, March 16^th, 2012.  The ceremony took place at St. Vincent’s Catholic Church in the West Adams district of Los Angeles, next door to the Mount’s Doheny Campus.  The church was standing room only for the nearly two hour service, with 500 students clad in yellow lining the aisles.  Honored guests included many civic and religious leaders as well as academics from a number of universities and colleges.  Ms. McElaney-Johnson was led into the church by a procession of alumnae, faculty, and students.  The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet who founded the college in 1925 provided a sense of scope and history to the occasion as the school embarked on a new era of education for women in Los Angeles.  The entire procession and ceremony streamed live on the internet and can be accessed for replay here.

St. Vincent’s is one of the most beautiful churches in Los Angeles, dedicated in 1925, and only the third parish constructed.  Albert C. Martin (no relation) was the architect, and much of the funding came from Edward Doheny whose mansion was next door.  That property became the Doheny campus of the Mount.  The church holds 1200 worshippers.

The interior is stunning with many side altars and niches containing statues, candles and elaborate carvings.  Two of the most striking features are the ceiling and the main altar.

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez attended the service and spoke to the crowd.

Richard J. Riordan, 39^th mayor of Los Angeles from 1993-2001 attended.  He processed into the church with Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas (Second District).

The procession moved from the Doheny campus down Adams to the church, led by 500 students in yellow followed by alumnae, faculty, dignitaries and the new president.

The Texture of Trees

I have become acutely aware of trees.

Robert Frost used them as a recurring motif in his poetry.

If one wishes to sustain the health of the planet, he risks being branded a “tree hugger.” Is that a bad thing?

Many nights this past winter, I sat up in front of the fire, the red glow bouncing off the walls, the ghosts of history all around, whispering out of the darkness.  The flames popped and hissed through the textured wood, warming the room against the chill, bringing comfort and dreams.

I taught a class last fall where I would give my students a topic to write about and turn them loose for twenty minutes to create.  While they tapped away at their laptops, I watched the trees outside the window, huge old Eucalypti, swaying in the wind off the ocean.  I felt as if they were whispering to me, calling my name, telling me that although I have loved being in the classroom for a long time, maybe I needed to break away.  Maybe I needed to be elsewhere, to go off and be bold and courageous.

Trees are the sentinels of our lives. Their rings tell a story. Their bark contains the scars of old fires, the careless ax, the hand-carved names of lovers long broken up, or even dead.


And of course, trees are us. Our bark tells a story. Our roots in a place go deep, and when we fall, we do so with a suddenness that shakes the very earth where we stand, a huge crash.

This year, a few days of high winds toppled trees through out southern California, littering the streets with branches and trunks, ripping down power lines, crushing cars. Trees hold power. Even against a bolt of lightening, the tree often still stands, smoldering.

I once learned an important lesson about words sitting in a tree.

My love and I carved our names in a tree when we were in the early days of our life together.  We returned to that tree older and wiser.  Our names were gone, subsumed by the trunk and bark, but we were still together.

I have come to appreciate the texture of trees.  I listen and meditate to their whispering language.  Even when I feel that I am alone in the world, and far from those I love, I know the trees are there, standing tall.  For this reason, I love them, like I love the mountains, like I love a blue sky in early spring, like I love the possibilities and the promises.  We grow old with them, and their silence is their wisdom.

Our Lady of Fatima

On Sunday, St. Elisabeth School and Parish dedicated a street corner to Our Lady of Fatima, complete with grotto and statue.  About 500 people crowded the streets to witness the event.

The story of Fatima is legendary in the Catholic Church. The Virgin Mary appeared to three small shepherd children in the village of Cova da Iria in Portugal beginning on May 13, 1917. She would appear many times over the next six months, always on the thirteenth day. Her message to the world was one of prophecy, including a second world war and the grave challenges the church would face. Some say she predicted the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, as well as the sex abuse scandal that has shaken the very foundation of the institution.

Two of the children were cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, who died in the Spanish Influenza outbreak 1919-1920. The lone survivor was Sister Lucia dos Santos, a member of the Discalced Carmelite order of nuns. She died at the age of 97 in 2005. The bodies of Jacinta and Francisco were exhumed in 1935 and 1951. Francisco’s corpse had decomposed, but Jacinta’s face was incorrupt, a common sign of a saintly person, according to church history.

St. Elisabeth School sits in an economically depressed area where police cars, crime and violence are frequently present.  But the students are good kids with concerned and motivated parents willing to make sacrifices to send their kids to a Catholic school.  Often, vendors with carts and stands line the sidewalks outside of the church to sell food and religious trinkets.  The neighborhood teems with life amid the rough and tumble streets of the barrio.

For this one Sunday, though, parishioners flooded those streets to watch the statue installed on the corner of Cedros Avenue and Kittridge Street.  The project was spearheaded by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization which has offered hope and assistance to an almost infinite number of people around the world.

Spring Break At The Mount

Today ends spring break at Mount St. Mary’s College.  Monday, students will again flood the campus, classes will be in session, and we will all focus our attention on the inauguration of our twelfth college president on March 16^th.  But during this calm before the storm, the campus takes on its other personality, that of a monastic place of peace and serenity.  Walking the grounds, one hears the birds, the bees, and the thrum of nature in the Santa Monica mountains.  Far down the hill is the bay and pier.  An oil tanker lounges lazily in the glassy water.  A slight breeze cleared the sky of smog and clouds.

It is good, this quiet before the storm of papers and tests, inauguration and graduation.  We gather our energy to finish the semester.  Then, summer will arrive, and the monastic peace will return, but that season has its own story to tell.  Here, today, spring has arrived.

The Mount is truly a special place, full of history and tradition, even as it prepares to launch a new beginning with a new president.  To know the history, to feel it in the walkways, stone stairs, and glorious architecture, one need only to take a walk around campus.  A visit to the Mount Archives blog might also be of help.  It is a truly beautiful place to study.

Over the course of the week, on several short excursions during my breaks from my office, these photographs tell the story of the Mount at spring break.

Art In New York

Bill Cunningham’s photographs have graced the pages of The New York Times for decades. He is the quintessential street photographer, spending his days bicycling the busy thoroughfares to catch candid shots of fashion on the avenue. He is both a cultural anthropologist and documentarian of beauty. In his blue smock and working stiff’s clothes, he snaps away, catching exquisite intricacies of what is fashionable this season.

Bill Cunningham New York (Zeitgeist Films, 2010) delves into his life as well as his work, both of which are so interconnected that one cannot separate one from the other. His is an ascetic’s existence. His apartment in the Carnegie Hall building is packed with file cabinets and boxes, containing thousands of negatives amassed during his daily shoots, of which only a few wind up being published on the pages of the newspaper. His bed rests on milk crates, and is little more than a mattress with a blanket. His apartment does not even have a bathroom. All of his time and energy—and he has a lot of the latter for a man in his 80s—is spent shooting on the streets during the day, and traveling to charity and fashion extravaganzas at night. He rarely takes a break, even to eat. His life is consumed with his work, and he would not have it any other way. This clear in every frame of film.

Herb & Dorothy (Arthouse Films, 2009) profiles Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who since the 1960s have been collecting Minimalist and Conceptual Art. Although unknown when their works were first sold, many of these artists have gone on to extraordinary careers. The couple is not wealthy and never have been; they purchased their collection on her librarian’s salary and his wages at the post office. Their cramped, cluttered apartment has the look of a hoarder’s, a fire hazard in the very essence of the term.

After decades of collecting, the couple gave their collection to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. They refused to take any money for it because they considered themselves caretakers of the works. The museum catalogued and transported the materials, and then set up an annuity for the pair as a way of compensating them at least in small part for the extraordinary gift. The couple took the money and turned around and purchased even more art. The end result is that their collection has been parceled out across the country to nearly every major contemporary art museum, and will be available to patrons for years to come, long after the Vogels are gone. They are an eccentric and intense couple, single-minded in their pursuit of art. They are not posers or members of high society. They are, like Cunningham, religious in their devotion to their work.

That is the most inspiring aspect of the two films. Bill Cunningham and the Vogels do not do what they do for money or fame. In fact, if no one recognized their work, they would continue their efforts in anonymity. They are passionate and strange, unfazed by what others might think of them. With Cunningham, he refuses to shoot with digital equipment, wandering the streets with his old film camera and developing film at a one-hour photo shop. An assistant scans his pictures and files them for his stories. The Vogels collect art that some might consider junk, but they have a unique vision for what will be considered invaluable works down the line. Their taste is unwavering. Both documentaries are insightful and inspiring.

A Pilgrim's Progress or Lack Thereof

A film I saw recently did something to me that few films do these days: provoke an emotional response and several days’ worth of contemplation. The film was The Way (2010), starring Martin Sheen and written, produced and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez.

Truth is, I have been at a bit of a crossroads in my life these days. When friends and acquaintances have hit middle age, I watched as they dyed their hair, used Rogaine, and bought nifty little sports cars that screamed mid-life crisis. I knew that I would never succumb to such nonsense. My father’s hairline began receding just after high school; I still have my hair, but had the gene been passed to me, I would gladly shave my head entirely and be done with it. But middle age creeps into people’s lives in different ways.

I am most bothered by feeling old—the pain, stiff joints, mental fog especially in the early mornings. I tell people as I limp into my office that “An old football injury is bothering me, but the funny thing is, I never played football.” Usually good for a few laughs. I am also troubled by less physical deficiencies. I must accept that fact that I will never be a drummer in a rock and roll band. The stories I tell now sound a little frayed around the edges, a little too much “I remember when,” and I have begun to notice the drifting away of my students’ focus when I launch into a soliloquy. Too slow, old man; got to pick up the pace. Keep abreast. Remain dynamic. It seems grey hair and a few lines on a face are the signs of a growing insignificance. I don’t need a sports car, hair plugs, or a young girl on my arm to reaffirm that I’ve still got it. I am perfectly happy with my wife and a quiet evening with a book in front of the fire. I just want to escape irrelevancy.

Which brings me to the film. Sheen plays a doctor in California, a widower, set in his ways with a comfortable practice and golf game. His son, however, is thirsting to live, to “suck out all the marrow of life,” as Thoreau put it. He wants to experience everything before he grows old, but his father doesn’t get it; why not settle down? He decides, much to his father’s chagrin, to go on a pilgrimage to hike the Camino de Santiago trail, a roughly 500 mile journey that begins in France, moves through the Basque country of Spain, and concludes at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. One day into his journey, the son is killed in a storm, and Sheen’s character, Thomas Avery, travels to France to retrieve his boy’s remains. Once there, he decides to walk the pilgrimage himself for his son. It is a powerful, moving story, filled with wisdom and allusion.

In a flashback scene, we see Thomas driving his son to the airport for the start of the journey. They argue—Thomas is comfortable with his life, but his son challenges him to see the world, to take a chance, to live. He begs his father to come with him. “I am happy with the life I’ve chosen,” Thomas tells his son.

“You don’t choose a life, dad,” he replies. “You live one.”

As Thomas walks the trail scattering the ashes of his only child along the way, we see flashes of his son in the background and in other characters. His journey, the incredible scenery, and his fellow travelers, all make for an emotional catharsis. Filmed along the actual pilgrimage with a small crew, there is an intimacy and documentary feel to the story, and the film deserves more attention than it received in its theatrical release. It comes out on DVD February 21st.

In those lines quoted above, I find much resonance. As much as we attempt to control our life in the hope that it will go on forever, we try to live as best we can, but control is an illusion. There is no compass or sextant that can predict our course. Life takes us where it will, and we must live it. As I age, I have spent a lot of time trying to control my life. I am a dog relentlessly chasing his own tail. It is time to let go. In our youth-driven culture, it is a sin to grow old. Unlike other cultures, we do not value the mature; we erase the lines on our faces with Botox, and fight the paunch around the middle with liposuction. I, however, am not ashamed of my years. I relish them as a new phase in my life. Most importantly, I try never to become too comfortable, too set in my ways, because that is when we are blindsided. That is when fate or God or destiny steps in and smacks us one just to let us know who is boss.

Living for me is deeply entwined with writing, but a writer cannot force the issue. The greatest sin of a writer is to write when he has nothing to say. I try to avoid this sin but there are many days I awake and feel like I want to drift. Spend the day or week or month just reading, or living. For me, life is a trinity of writing, reading, and living, yet if this threesome is out of balance, I find myself deeply unhappy. I need to feel I am moving forward, gathering steam in the form of reading books, and capturing it all with the crude symbols of written language. I relish the sense of warmth and satisfaction that comes at the end of a day when I have lived well in the world, connected with the mind of another on the pages of a book, and written a good draft of an essay.

The danger in my three-pronged attack is self-absorption. When I pick up my pen, I need to feel my subject on a personal level to write coherently about it. Yet if done correctly, this is not narcissism, but a process of synthesizing and internalizing the insights of observation and reading. I try to keep in mind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s view that “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all man—that is genius.” In living, reading and writing, I want to stay connected to the universe. It is a pledge, a commitment that is difficult to achieve, but we try because that is the nature of living as art.

A teacher of mine once told me that to write or sculpt or paint is by its very nature arrogant and self-absorbed. “Look at this,” the artist demands. “This is important.” We ask an audience to pay attention; we insist that we have something important to say. Therefore, our arrogance demands that we fulfill that promise. We must always have something relevant to say, or we should shut up and leave the world alone.

It is the journey through this existence that I wish to document. Like the main character in The Way, I am a simple pilgrim traveling through the hills and valleys and treacherous terrain of this dimension. On many days, I am disheartened by my lack of progress. But like most travelers, we move forward in painfully slow steps, the proverbial one foot at a time. We are subject to the rough and curving road, the lay of the land, the storms that swirl along the jet stream in the remarkable sky over our heads. The storms, the frigid temperatures, the sun’s relentless heat, our aching muscles and feet—these must be endured. There will be days when we are lost, when it feels like we will never find our way home. Yet these are the moments when the adventure truly begins.

The School From Hell

What a quagmire for the Los Angeles Unified School District and Superintendent John Deasy! Three high profile arrests for lewd conduct with a child in two weeks. Two of those arrests at the same school, Miramonte in south Los Angeles, where the suspects taught for more than twenty and thirty years respectively. And in all that time, no one saw anything weird? And if they did, they either did nothing about it, or lacked the courage to take necessary action to protect kids.

Now, in a development that has angered some parents, all teachers and administrators at Miramonte have been removed from the school for the remainder of the school year. They will be replaced by teachers who were given reduction in force notices. Why did district officials feel this move was necessary? Are more arrests pending? What do district administrators know that we don’t?

What this unfolding aberration tells us is that test scores are not as important as classroom supervision when evaluating teachers. Administrators must be in their teachers’ classrooms multiple times a day. They must know what is happening in those rooms, and by watching and observing, they will know the worth of a particular teacher. It is that simple. Teacher observation should be the primary way we evaluate educators.

Teachers will tell us that being observed makes them nervous. Being in the classroom with 25 to 30 kids each day is stressful enough. To know that an administrator might wander in at any moment adds another layer of tension to an already difficult situation, but it is necessary. It is imperative.

Teachers cannot be allowed to operate in a vacuum. In the education of a child, every year, every day, every class period is important and inter-related. If one teacher isn’t teaching, the rest of the program falters. The weak link weakens the whole chain.

Contrary to appearances, the teacher is not the only one responsible for what happens in the classroom. The principal, historically known as the principal teacher, is also responsible for what happens there. An administrator is nothing more than the lead teacher, or at least that is what he or she should be. These days, the principal is more politician than teacher, a middle manager tasked with implementing district bureaucracy and pleasing the customer: parents and students.

A principal’s job is to make sure the educational needs of students are being met, and that teachers are teaching curriculum with clear objectives and goals for each and every lesson. In private schools, administrators have really moved away from this obligation to focus on boosting enrollment and endowments, serving as marketing directors, advertising executives, community and public relations officers, even financial managers and bookkeepers. Many principals will say, “Where is the time to go to every classroom multiple times a day?” Answer: the time must be made; the job of teacher and student supervision must be the first and primary priority of every administrator.

Therefore, the administration at Miramonte School should face consequences for dereliction of duty. They should have known what was happening in their classrooms. These were veteran teachers who spent decades at the school; how could administrators, or even other teachers, not know, or at least have some inkling that things were amiss? Blindfolding students, taping their mouths, feeding them treats laced with semen—these were not quick crimes; they took planning and time to execute. If these principals had simply looked in the window they might have noticed things were not right.

Yet, even in the recent talk of our failing education system and need for reform, teachers are blamed for failures based on test scores. Teachers are fired. But what about the administrators? If they allow teachers like these two suspects to continue to work with students decade after decade, should they not face criminal charges? Yes, a teacher executes the lesson plan. The teacher makes sure every student is on task and focused. The teacher is responsible for communicating with parents about the students’ progress or lack thereof. But it is the principal who oversees it all. If a teacher is not performing, or kids are not learning, the principal is responsible for removing the teacher and repairing the inadequacies. To remove the teacher without considering the role of the principal in the mess is shortsighted. In this instance, Deasy was right to remove teachers and administrators at Miramonte.

In this atrocity, I would include in the loop of incompetence and possible criminality the superintendent and his management team, as well as the administration of Miramonte School. I have been sickened by the situation, but also by Deasy’s belated outrage and blustering on the TV news each evening. As more evidence unfolds revealing a situation that has developed over years and not just in the last few weeks, it will be clear that others knew something was wrong in the classroom and did nothing to investigate and stop it. Of this, I am certain.

Teaching is different from other workplaces. Management techniques from the business and manufacturing worlds cannot be adapted to the classroom. Workers on an assembly line operate in plain sight of supervisors, for one, and teachers operate behind closed doors. To remedy this situation and prevent it from happening again, those classroom doors must be thrown open and administrators must be in the classroom observing the interaction between teacher and students. And both teacher and principal must be held accountable for what happens each day.

For now, the damage has been done. For those of us who are committed educators, who place the well-being and education of our students above our own needs, we have all been given a black eye. Teachers are already denigrated in this country, and this aberration will no doubt make the situation even worse. The school from hell has brought us all down—superintendents, administrators and teachers—and that is a tragedy with consequences we can only begin to ascertain.



Photo courtesy of Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times